by Michael C. Roberts
Daphne turns back into a woman and runs
Our limbs, once bound together as two
saplings planted too close together by
some amorous gardener playing god,
turned two to one.
Us, cursed with the responsibility of splitting
oak bare-handed. And I, in exile from the garden
where we first kissed, mangled your branches
which only ever gave me refuge
under your familiar penumbra.
We meet again in foreign glades and
even now your bough bends towards mine
not the sun. Forgive me
overlooking your bloom, seeing
only my withered seeds.
Both our bodies remember how
we moved together, bending the air
of June breezes, shivering through
the centrifuge. He tries to hold my hand but
your phantom gives him splinters. Still,
I wake and think of you. Oh,
you would love our turning.
Lindsey Poremba is a reader, writer, and art historian from New Hampshire. She lives in Queens while pursuing her graduate degree in art history. Her current projects include repetition, redundancy, circles, and fountains. She can be found @lindsey_poremba on Instagram.
Michael C. Roberts is a sort-of retired clinical child/pediatric psychologist with a passion for retro-analogue photography. He often makes images on film via cheap cameras with plastic lenses and spring mechanisms to produce a dreamy soft focus on photographic film and some vignetting. The cameras allow double exposures in the camera, light leaks in reddish or whitish clouds along with scratches on the film. His film and digital photographs have appeared in American Psychologist, Health Psychology, The Canary, Images Arizona, Burningword, The Storms, The Healing Muse, and elsewhere. His book of photographs, “Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga,” is available on Amazon. Twitter/X @MichaelCRobert3 Instagram @michaelroberts1018.